ARCHBISHOP PHILIP FREIER'S CHRISTMAS MESSAGE

Aboriginal peoples and issues - an abstraction for most Australians.

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

The words of Martin Luther King quoted by

Bev Manton, Chairperson, NSW Aboriginal Lands Council,

9 July 2007

In all the trials besetting Aboriginal Australians, Miss Eagle believes that the majority of Australians are of good will and want wrongs to be rectified and great strides to be made in bringing Aboriginal people into the same situation of the majority of mainstream Australians.

Miss Eagle also believes that most Australians are ignorant of how and where Aboriginal people live. They are not attuned to what Aboriginal people themselves are saying, what has been done, what has not been done. In short, Miss Eagle has come to the firm conclusion that, for most Australians, Aboriginal people are an abstract issue. Issues affecting them are somewhere out there in the ether. There is little recognition in reality that Aboriginal people are PLU - People Like Us; that we should obey the Christian commandment and love them in the same way that we love ourselves.

Here is a report on one Australian, the distinguished Fiona Stanley, who clearly finds the plight of Aboriginal people to be real - no abstract, not somewhere out in the ether.

Oh, that more could feel this way: that more Australians could be better informed and more active in listening to and working with Aboriginal people to demand greater accountability by governments and bureaucrats in spending our taxpayer dollars to provide citzens' entitlements to ALL citizens.

The Archbishop and Childhood Depression

Please sign the Archbishop's Petition.

It is just over twelve months since Philip Freier was installed as Archbishop of Melbourne. Miss Eagle is unable to comment on whether Ab Philip is a good administrator of the affairs of the Archdiocese. She is also unable to comment on what sort of guidance, counsel and spiritual leadership the Archbishop provides to the clergy and laity. However, there is no gainsaying the public leadership provided by the Archbishop in 2007. It has been constant and remarkable.

He began with his Prayer4Melbourne quest. This twelve month program has seen the Archbishop out and about in all sorts of places and settings meeting all sorts of people. This has promoted awareness of Melbourne not only for the Archbishop, a newcomer to Melbourne, but within the Anglican constituency itself. The quest has also given the Archbishop and the Anglican community an enlarged profile in Melbourne.

In tandem with the quest, has been Conversations with the Archbishop. The conversations, which are held at BMW Edge in Federation Square, have received great attention and interest. The quality of the speakers has been excellent. The Archbishop has handled his role well.

[A small contingent from St Thom's at Upper Gully will be fronting up to this Wednesday's conversation with Hugh McKay. This is no mean feat because none of us are young and we will be catching the 6.32am train. This will get us there a few minutes late, Archbishop, but we'll be there with our Christmas bells on!]

One exercise of communal and Christian leadership was the Archbishop's address in reply to Patrick Dodson's speech in Brunswick in October. It was a tour de force.

One of the Archbishop's conversations focussed on childhood depression when, on November 14, he held a public conversation under the title Our crisis of childhood depression. Ab Philip was joined by the Director of Women's Forum Australia, Melinda Tankard Reist, and Professor Alasdair Vance, the Head of Academic Child Psychiatry, Department of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne. The Archbishop has called for a national inquiry into the state of childhood in Australia. He has renewed his call to-day in The Age.

Archbishop Philip has highlighted Mission Australia's 2007 Survey of Australia's Young People. Read of its major findings here.

Let there be light: trustworthy and knowledgable

Many Australian's are suffering shell-shock in trying to comprehend the Howard Shock and Awe Campaign of intervention in the Northern Territory. Those who have never been to the NT or only done the tour up The Track have difficulty understanding why there is an uproar about the Howard/Brough activity.

The nub of the problem is that Howard and Brough have not been there - except in an adverse manner - to achieve outcomes in the very deep concerns of the Aboriginall people and those who work side by side with them. So who to believe, these people ask?

To-day's The Age carries two articles which fall into the category of :

Here's another point of view which is different from the Government which is trustworthy and knowledgable.

The first is from James Ensor, Director of Public Policy at Oxfam. James is well-known for his articles contributed to On Line Opinion. To-day he explains about the need for solutions implemented over the long term and points us to the Close the Gap Campaign.

The second is from the distinguished John Fogarty, former Justice of the Family Court of Australia. His article seeks to bring some rationality to the debate about parents having social security benefits quarantined in relation to child abuse.

The Howard Government has always been free with its abuse using the pejorative term political correctness slander and/or shut up its critics. Miss Eagle, dear Reader, has seen some funny sights when the ultra-conservative sector of the population seek to prove that they, too, know how to be non-discriminatory. Howard's extension of the quarantining idea to all parents - not just Aboriginal ones - is an example of ultra-conservatism tipping its lid to a heavy hitting policy implemented, in its view, in a non-discriminatory way. Crikey to-day has a good critique of Labor's me-tooism on this matter.

So Miss E's advice is to remember two things:

• H.C. Andersen's tale of The Emperor's New Clothes
• The quote attributed to Edmund Burke : The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Aboriginal insecurity: thinking on vines and fig trees. Part 1

Moreton Bay Fig Tree, Queen's Gardens, Townsville

Photo by Alice at A Growing Delight

Micah, an eighth century prophet of the Tanakh/Old Testament, is a great friend of Miss Eagle. He is much quoted. One of the most frequent quotes is

and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,

and their spears into pruning hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

neither shall they learn war any more;

Not so often heard is the next verse, Micah 4:4

but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree,

and none shall make them afraid;

for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.

This is one of Micah's latter day prophecies so, even in the 21st century - it is arguable - that we cannot expect the fulfilment of the prophecy. However, while fulfilment may be postponed, these prophecies have embedded themselves in Judaism and Christianity as ideals for which the people of God strive.

This week has been one in which, at least for Miss Eagle, the pain and insecurity of Aboriginal people has coalesced around three major issues: the nuclear industry; the legal system; the abuse of children.

Miss Eagle can never feel what Aboriginal people who exist at the margins of white settler society feel and experience. However, Miss Eagle has spent most of her life in Northern Australia - in North Queensland and the Northern Territory - the site of the manifestations of these three issues. Miss Eagle has lived amid some quite significant Aboriginal communities and populations. So while she is not affected as her Aboriginal friends are, she does experience the pain of the issues of this week in something like a reflected manner: through a glass darkly.

Bringing these major issues affecting Aboriginal people and nations into a coherent post is not easy. Thoughts could not be quickly expressed. One could not rush to verbage to express such deep pain. Miss Eagle is not sure she has found a pathway to coherence even now. So, dear Reader, Miss E begs you to indulge her patiently as we tread this pathway to a connected, coherent view of what is happening and what it really means. In treading this pathway, we will travel behind the headlines. Hopefully, we can sublimate emotions and the emotive. This will be not easy - and may well be impossible.

...to be continued

Shopping: therapy, festival, compulsion, illness, manipulation

Ramada - Mall of America

Shopping is better than sex.
If you're not satisfied after shopping you can make an exchange for something you really like.

Adrienne Gusoff

Shop Til You Drop Magazine

What is it about shopping? What is it about shopping and the female of the species? Can we live with it? Can we live without it?

We talk about retail therapy. There seems to be a word for shopping til you drop: oniomania. Melbourne - which has more than its fair share of bread and circuses - is contemplating, as Miss Eagle has mentioned before, a shopping festival. Dubai actually has one and so has Hong Kong.

It is lovely to walk through beautiful shops selling beautiful things - even if one doesn't spend. Miss Eagle can still dream about Prada and Bulgari even if she can't afford it. This is why, even though she has not spent a cent there, Miss E was thrilled by the refurbishment of the Ground Floor at David Jones' Burke Street Mall store.

Could there possibly be a down side?

There is the illness. The cultural distortion which sees Hot Cross Buns - an Easter tradition - on sale before Epiphany. Advertising manipulating our children. The sexualization of our children. And for more information on how, when we consume, we are consumed go here.

Then there is the economic impact. Some see the globalization of retail and commodities which it sells as a positive thing. This article - brief as it is - comes out on the positive size while mentioning social disruption and the loss of jobs in some sectors of the economy.

We need to remember that when we purchase all that stuff from China and India it is great for their economies. And they really do need jobs. But when we lose jobs in this nation, we also lose skills - skills that are not always readily replaced with new ones. We can also lose access to jobs and personal economic development for women and young people.

So what is the solution? Miss E has none except the caveat emptor (buyer beware) provisions. Be aware! Demand accountability - not just from individuals but from governments and corporations.

If we become aware and demand accountability, we will become smart, ethical shoppers.

And for increasing numbers of us, we will go this way to the opp shop.

Have the gates of hell prevailed in Catholic Ireland?

If you don't want your heart touched with sadness, don't go here. The Knitter writes in the blog titled Days in the Life of Ireland's Child Care Institutions n the 20th century. Miss Eagle was raised in a pre-Vatican II background of Irish-Catholicism, Australian-style. We hear of the great fall away from the Roman Catholic faith in Ireland which is stunning for those who, like Miss E, were taught by nun after nun with an Irish accent who had left far-away Ireland as teenage girls and never saw their homeland again.

The Knitter shows us why in stark terms. Like this:

LOVE is never having to say you're sorry, but if you do, you don't have to mean it.

LOVE is never having to admit to physical abuse.

LOVE is never having to admit to sexual abuse.

LOVE is never having to admit to psychological abuse.

LOVE is never having to admit to illtreatment of abandoned children.

LOVE is never having to admit to cruelty to children.

LOVE is never having to admit to the starvation of children.

LOVE is never going to win any part of the argument.

and then there are graphics like this:

The Reverend is a brick

Over at Alas Maia has linked us to The Brick Testament. It is a joy and delight. Watch it! There are classifications for sexual content, violence, nudity, and cursing. Enjoy.